We Call Them 'Private Parts' For A Reason

ROBIN P. MCHAELEN | OP-EDThe Hartford Courant

In a perfect world, every child could be fully, joyfully themselves. A boy could be a boy simply because he knows in his deepest self that he is a boy.

Take Matthew Massé of Vernon. When Matthew was born to Susan and Thomas Massé, everyone said he was a girl. But he never really "acted like a girl." His mom vividly remembers the last time she was able to wrangle him into a dress was when he was about 3.

"He always wanted to wear boys' clothes; play boys' games, be outside doing boys' things," his mom told me. As a child and as an adolescent, he was bullied mercilessly in school. He never could be the girl that everyone wanted him to be.

Finally, in mid-adolescence, Matthew came out to his parents. "I am really a boy," he said. "And I always have been."

Even though they had suspected something, it took his folks a little while to wrap their minds around the concept. It wasn't long, though, before his parents stood firmly in his corner. They talked — and encouraged him to talk — to people who could help and understand what he was going through. They learned new words — transgender, gender identity, gender non-conformity. They began to understand the difference between one's sex (our chromosomes and body parts) and our gender identity (our understanding of ourselves as a boy, a girl or something more or different than that.)

His parents helped him legallychange his name to Matthew. They advocated for him to move from a school that refused to see him as the boy he was, to a school that accepted and affirmed him. Most recently, Matthew and his parents worked diligently to get the state Department of Motor Vehicles to change his driver's licenseidentification from female to male. After several frustrating attempts, they finally had the DMV's newest request for additional paperwork in hand.

By the end of next week, according to the bureaucratic timetable, Matthew would have his new driver's license in his male name, showing his gender as male. The world would then see him as he saw himself. Finally, for Matthew, a perfect world.

Then, May 25 in one awful moment, everything changed. Matthew, who was three weeks short of graduating with honors, and four of his friends were out riding around in a car on Abbe Road in South Windsor. There was a terrible accident, the vehicle left the road and struck a tree. Matthew and one of his friends, Brooke Wormstedt, 15, were killed instantly and the three other teens were injured.

Matthew's family, grief-stricken though they were, wanted to honor their son by making sure that the police and the press used his correct male identity. Under media protocols recommended and disseminated by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, Matthew should simply have been identified as an 18-year-old boy, especially in Connecticut, which includes gender identity and expression in its civil rights statutes. But the medical examiner, then the police, then the press identified Matthew as "a female who identifies as male."

He went from being Matthew, a boy who loved his friends, fishing and Facebook to a girl who dressed like a boy. For Matthew's family, this was one final indignity. His mom told me, "Matthew was a warrior! He fought to be himself in the face of great opposition. For them to call him a girl now is such a blow, such a travesty!"

When there is news, there is always a tension between a family's right to privacy and the public's right to know. What did the public really need to know about Matthew — who he was or what was under his clothes? They are called "private parts" for a reason, after all. The powers that be — in this case, the medical examiner, police and press — had no right to invade his privacy after his death.

Matthew deserved better. And so do we.

Robin P. McHaelen is executive director of True Colors Inc. in Hartford, a nonprofit organization that works to ensure that the needs of sexual and gender minority youth are recognized and met.